Parabola, Kensington High Street

The man who invented modern British cooking, Rowley Leigh is the culinary equivalent of a design classic. He first made headlines at Kensington Place restaurant way back in the late 1980s with simple, unfussy, gutsy food. Just as London Design Week opens, he is announced as the new chef-patron of Parabola at The Design Museum taking charge of the whole food operation from breakfast in the café through to dinner in the top floor dining room.

Parabola is the restaurant owned by Sir Terence Conran, his wife Vicki, and business partner Peter Preston. Leigh has consulted since the very beginning and was their first, and most successful, guest chef. London foodies are thrilled Leigh is back in action. His new menu launches 25 September.

A roguish smile, a Cambridge English degree, his tenure as the Financial Times’ resident cook, and a penchant for inventing dishes every diner clamours for, such as his sublime wobbly parmesan custard with anchovy toast, have all made Leigh beloved in the culinary world.

Parabola gets its name from the undulating, copper hyperbolic roof of the Grade II listed modernist building The Design Museum is housed in. The restaurant’s dining room is a paean to understated, cool, calm design in blue, stained ash and polished pewter. It is spare and subtle with no gimmicks just as Leigh describes his unfussy cooking style that borrows generously from France and Italy whilst being scrupulously seasonal and down to earth.

A cocktail bar, overlooking Holland Park will be open all day, serving 10 classic cocktails alongside a regularly changing list of 10 – many inspired by the herbs and botanicals to be found in the Kyoto Garden in neighbouring Holland Park.

We greedily await the next chapter of Leigh’s culinary career.